27, August 2018

Southern Cameroons War: Anxiety as Ambazonian refugees flood Taraba communities in Nigeria ⁰

NO fewer than 4,000 refugees from Southern Cameroon have invaded border communities in Kurmi and Ussa Local Government areas of Taraba State. The refugees, mostly women and children, fled their home country following escalation of hostilities between Francophone and Anglophone communities, over agitation for the independence of Southern Cameroon. Vanguard discovered that the host communities are groaning under the burden of increasing number of refugees, which could lead to humanitarian crisis in the area.

It’s ethnic cleansing— one of the refugees, Polycarp Ande, who fled from Furawa sub-division into Fikyu village, alleged that Cameroonian soldiers led the ethnic cleansing. According to him, hunger, lack of health care, lack of shelter and idleness were major challenges, which, he noted, in turn had ripple effects on their community, dominated by subsistence farmers. He explained that villagers and churches had been feeding them, and expressed worry over their increasing number amid meagre resources.

According to Ande, “some of our brothers, who went back to see how the situation was in our villages, keep running back as the onslaught is still going on. As at last Saturday, over 15 of our people came into Kpambo-piri in Ussa and more people keep coming into Nigeria every week. “Our children are the most affected because they can’t go to school and we want the government of Nigeria and the world to come to our aid.”

Village Head of Mubi-Toso, Yakubu Akama, and his counterpart in Fikyu village, Ukwe Ezra, in separate submissions, expressed concern over possible invasion of their terrain by the feuding parties. They further appealed to the Federal Government for adequate security and provision of relief materials for the refugees. It’s overwhelming, we need help.

Council boss and Chairman of Ussa Local Government Area, Rimamsikwe Hassan, for his part, lamented that the massive influx of Cameroonians into some communities in the council is overwhelming. He said: “The refugees have moved into Kpambo-piri, Jatau, Kanpiya and Fikyu village, with Fikyu having the least number of 250 refugees, including children, at the last count. “When they (refugees) first moved in, the Red Cross visited some of the villages to take statistics and promised to come back, but ever since they have not returned. We have equally written to the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally-Displaced Persons, NCFRMI, but yet to get a reply from them. “However, the state government through SEMA brought relief materials for the victims, but we also want the Federal Government to come in and liaise with the Cameroonian authorities.”

www.vanguardngr.com

27, August 2018

UN, EU ignoring genocide in Southern Cameroons ⁰

The European Union and the United Nation’s deliberate silence on the ongoing genocide in Southern Cameroons and ethnic cleansing of Ambazonian tribes are tarnishing the UN’s credibility. A senior traditional ruler from the Manyu County recently told Cameroon Concord News that genocide and ethnic cleansing were taking place in Southern Cameroons and such crimes were being ignored by the international community including the so-called African Union. The Manyu custodian who sued for anonymity also pointed out that South West CPDM elites should also be held accountable for the crimes committed by French Cameroun soldiers.

Another traditional authority from the Kupe Muanenguba County contacted by our correspondent in Tombel observed that “There is really no legitimacy left for the African Union and the UN if such massacre in Southern Cameroons would be allowed to continue after all these years and nothing would be done about it.”

The 85 year President Paul Biya declared war against the people of Southern Cameroons that has left some 2000 Southern Cameroonians dead and displaced around 200,000 people since late 2016. Some 50.000 of those displaced have crossed the border into neighboring Nigeria.

Years of resentment at perceived discrimination at the hands of the Cameroon’s francophone majority have led to almost daily acts of violence and retribution. Security in the newly created Federal Republic of Ambazonia has deteriorated significantly since late last year and now clashes with Ambazonian Restoration Forces are almost daily occurrences.

The Biya Francophone government sources say a total of 109 members of the police and security forces have been killed. The conflict now poses problems for the organization of a counterfeit presidential election, scheduled for October 7, in which the 85-year-old incumbent, Paul Biya, is bidding for a seventh consecutive term.

At the time of filing this report, we gathered that the Red Dragons of Lebialem have broken into the D.O’s office at Alou and taken all the ballot boxes, papers and cards.

By Sama Ernest in Kumba with additional report from Chi Prudence Asong

27, August 2018

Giving Back To Society: SOBA UK donates 1000 Pounds to ExSSA UK ⁰

In a massive show of solidarity and support the Executive President of the Sasse Old Boys Association, SOBA UK over the weekend in Chesford Grange Hotel unveiled a one thousand pound (£1,000) donation to the ex-students of Saker Baptist College, ExSSA UK in their latest string of charitable support to alumni associations.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the money will help expand and improve ExSSA UK’s activities including their theme to engage and elevate the education of the girl child. In a captivating speech delivered by the much respected SOBA UK President Mr Ayuk Akoh-Arrey, the Sakerettes were reminded of the long standing connection between the students of Joseph’s College, Sasse and Saker Baptist College Limbe. President Akoh-Arrey told the sell-out crowd of over 300 guests that Sasse College and Saker Baptist share a long standing history, and that their cause to support the education of the girl child was a good cause, and he congratulated the National President of ExSSA, Ms Irene Tamajong and her organising committee for putting up a great convention.

The SOBA UK President made public the names of the many SOBANS who attended the event, among them, the former CPDM UK Section Vice President Comrade Alfred Bate Bawak, Chief Bate of MECA Leicester and Hon. Eko Ngwashi, along with members of the SOBA UK Executive team in full attendance.

The President of ExSSA UK, Irene Tamajong assured the guests at the convention that the money will be spent on good causes. Speaking to our UK correspondent immediately after his presentation, President Akoh-Arrey said SOBA UK will continue to make significant donations to support its members and charitable causes. He said the key target for SOBA UK now is to deliver a very successful Convention on 22nd September 2018 at St George’s Park, the Home of England National teams.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

27, August 2018

US: McCain wanted Obama, not Trump, to deliver eulogies at funeral ⁰

US Senator John McCain, who died of brain cancer on Saturday, requested that former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush deliver eulogies at his funeral, and did not wish President Donald Trump to attend his services, according to reports.

McCain had long feuded with President Trump, and his family asked, before the senator’s death, that Trump not attend the funeral services, two White House officials familiar with the plans told The Associated Press.

Former Vice President Joe Biden will speak at a separate service in Arizona.

Obama, who defeated McCain in the 2008 presidential race, issued a statement shortly after the senator’s death, saying that “we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher — the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed.”

“Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did,” Obama said. “But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt.”

Bush, who defeated McCain for the Republican nomination in 2000, issued a statement parsing McCain as “a man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order.”

In this file photo taken on March 05, 2008, then Republican presidential candidate John McCain (L) shakes hands with then US President George W. Bush after receiving his endorsement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC.

The White House had prepared an official statement that hailed the life of McCain, but President Trump told senior advisers that he preferred to post a tweet instead.

Trump’s tweet did not include any kind words for the long-time senator and Vietnam War veteran.

“My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!” Trump posted Saturday evening.

McCain will lie in state at the Arizona Capitol on Wednesday, before his body will be flown to Washington to lie in state at the US Capitol.

McCain, who served as a Republican senator from Arizona for more than three decades, wished to be buried at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, near the grave of a long-time friend.

Source: Presstv

27, August 2018

Former United States Nuncio says Pope Francis knew about the McCarrick Scandal and should resign ⁰

During the night between August 25 and 26, while Pope Francis was resting in Dublin, the newspaper “La Verità” in Italian, “The National Catholic Register” and “Lifesite News” in English, and “InfoVaticana” in Spanish published – respectively introduced by Marco Tosatti, Edward Pentin, Diane Montagna, and Gabriel Ariza – the stunning accusation by the former apostolic nuncio in the United States, Carlo Maria Viganò, against those at the highest levels of the Church, starting with the pope himself, who knew for some time about the scandalous homosexual activity of the no-longer-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, but in spite of this did nothing about it.

Viganò was the Holy See’s ambassador in Washington from 2011 to 2016, after having been from 1998 to 2009 a delegate in Rome for the pontifical embassies, with the faculty of overseeing the personal dossiers of candidates for the episcopacy. And he had proof that as of 2000 the Vatican authorities had been informed by the nunciature in the United States of McCarrick’s immoral conduct, without this hindering his promotion as archbishop of Washington and as cardinal.

In 2006, it was Viganò himself who sent the secretary of state at the time, Tarcisio Bertone, a dossier against McCarrick compiled over the previous years by the nuncios in the United States at the time, Gabriel Montalvo and Pietro Sambi. And he did the same in 2008, forwarding to the highest Vatican authorities a report redacted by one of the most assiduous investigators of sexual abuse in the States, Richard Sipe.

In both cases, he received no reply. But when the information reached, by means unknown, Benedict XVI himself, there was an effect. Between 2009 and 2010 McCarrick was subjected – Viganò writes – to the following sanctions:

“The Cardinal was to leave the seminary where he was living, he was forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance.”

The sanctions were communicated to McCarrick by then-nuncio Sambi. But they were never put into practice, with the full support of the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who continued to host the reprobate at the seminary of his diocese and to treat him with full honors, only to declare now that he never knew anything about his misconduct.

Then, in 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope, and on June 23 he received Viganò in audience, after he had become nuncio in the United States. Who today reports as follows the words he said and the pope’s reaction:

“Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.’ The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject.”

The fact is that Francis not only did not require McCarrick to submit to the sanctions that had been imposed on him by Benedict XVI, but he kept him close until a few weeks ago as his chief adviser in the key appointments that are reshaping the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, promoting his proteges. “It was only when he was forced by the report of the abuse of a minor,” Viganò writes, “that he took action [regarding McCarrick].”

But in the judgment of the former nuncio in the United States, for Pope Francis the case could not be seen as closed. Viganò writes at the culminating point of his indictment:

“Francis is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren. Indeed, by his action he has divided them, led them into error, and encouraged the wolves to continue to tear apart the sheep of Christ’s flock. In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”

Viganò’s “Testimony” is highly substantiated and charges other important cardinals, from Pietro Parolin to Sean Patrick O’Mallet to Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga. It is absolutely a must-read, in its entirety.

Source: L’Espresso

26, August 2018

2 police killed in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region ⁰

At least two police officers have died in fresh violence in Anglophone Cameroon where English-speaking separatists have declared an independent state, the military said Sunday.

The men were killed by armed pro-independence fighters near the town of Wum in Northwest Region, an army spokesman said.

The separatist camp spoke of nine police dead. Army spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck said, on Facebook, that 21 of the attackers had been “neutralized”, without saying how many had been involved in the assault.

Separatist unrest in Cameroon’s two minority English-speaking regions, North-West and South-West, has left scores dead and displaced around 200,000 people since late 2016.

About 30.000 of those displaced have crossed the border into neighboring Nigeria. Years of resentment at perceived discrimination at the hands of the Cameroon’s francophone majority have led to almost daily acts of violence and retribution.

Security in the two regions has deteriorated significantly since late last year and now clashes with separatist fighters are almost daily occurrences.

A total of 109 members of the police and security forces have been killed, according to government figures.

The conflict poses problems for the organization of the presidential election, scheduled for October 7, in which the 85-year-old incumbent, Paul Biya, is bidding for a seventh consecutive term.

Anglophones today account for about a fifth of the West African country’s population of 22 million.

(Source: AFP)

26, August 2018

No amount of alcohol is healthy ⁰

No amount of alcohol consumption is healthy and any slight health benefits of drinking alcohol are clearly offset by the risks, according to a major new study in the United States.

The study by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation looked at levels of alcohol use and its health effects in 195 countries, including the US, between 1990 and 2016.

The researchers built a database of more than a thousand alcohol studies and data sources. The goal was to estimate how alcohol affects the risk of 23 health problems. The number that came out, in the end, was zero. Anything more than that was associated with health risks.

“Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none,” researchers explain in the study published in The Lancet. “This level is in conflict with most health guidelines, which espouse health benefits associated with consuming up to two drinks per day.”

“What has been underappreciated, what’s surprising, is that no amount of drinking is good for you,” said Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of global health at the University of Washington and the senior author of the report.

“People should no longer think that a drink or two a day is good for you. What’s best for you is to not drink at all,” she said.

This new data concludes that “consuming zero standard drinks daily minimizes the overall risk to health,” and recommends that countries with high rates of drinking do more to prevent a troubling rise in the use of alcohol.

Prior studies have suggested that moderate drinking can help prevent some kinds of heart disease and diabetes, among other medical conditions. But the new study found that many other health risks offset and overwhelm the health benefits.

The top 10 countries for drinking are all in Europe, according to the study, which also identifies men as most likely to abuse alcohol around the world. The countries with the least alcohol consumption were predominantly Muslim. Drinking alcohol is prohibited in Islam.

The report found that 2.8 million people across the globe died in 2016 of alcohol-related causes. Those deaths include alcohol-related cancer and cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, intentional injury such as violence and self-harm, and traffic accidents and other unintentional injuries such as drowning and fires.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 88,000 US residents die of alcohol-related causes each year.

US health officials have highlighted the problem of binge drinking and have said that lawmakers should consider a variety of actions, including alcohol taxes and limits on the density of alcohol retailers.

Source: Presstv

26, August 2018

South Africa summons US chargé d’affaires over Trump’s tweets ⁰

South Africa’s government has summoned US Chargé d’Affaires Jessye Lapenn over US President Donald Trump’s tweet on Pretoria’s land policy.

On his Twitter on Wednesday, Trump said he had asked his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate South Africa’s “land and farm seizures and expropriations and large scale killing of farmers.”

Shortly after Trump’s comment, South Africa responded in a tweet that it “totally rejects this narrow perception, which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”

The South African government added that the country would “speed up the pace of land reform in a careful and inclusive manner that does not divide” the nation.

Early this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) was moving ahead with plans to alter the constitution in order to allow the expropriation of land without compensation, as white South Africans still owned most of the country’s land nearly a quarter of a century after the collapse of the apartheid system in South Africa.

Ramaphosa is trying to accelerate land reform plans before the 2019 general elections in order to “undo a grave historical injustice” against the black people during colonialism and the apartheid era that ended in 1994.

White community in South Africa constitute eight percent of the population possessing 72 percent of farms, while only four percent of the lands are owned by black people making up 80 percent of the population.

According to the AgriSA, an association of agricultural groups across South Africa, 47 farmers have been killed in South Africa since 2017.

The number of attacks on farmers has undergone an increase from 478 in 2016-17 to 561 this year, but the government’s involvement in the killings remains unclear.

Source: Presstv

26, August 2018

US Senator John McCain dies age 81 after battle with brain cancer ⁰

The senior Republican Senator from Arizona and former Republican nominee for president in the 2008 election, John Sidney McCain III, died Sunday after battling brain cancer for more than a year.

McCain suffered from glioblastoma, a rare and particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. It was announced on Friday that he had decided to stop treatment for his condition.

McCain was surrounded by his wife Cindy and his family in Arizona during his final hours.

“He was a great fire who burned bright, and we lived in his light and warmth,” said Meghan McCain, one of the late senator’s seven children.

The six-term senator was born on August 29, 1936, in Panama – a US protectorate at the time. He attended the United States Naval Academy from 1954 until 1958, training as a pilot.

During the Vietnam War, McCain’s plane was shot down over Hanoi while on a bombing mission in 1967. Both his arms and a leg were broken in the incident. He was held by the North Vietnamese at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner of war camp until 1973. More than two of those years were spent in solitary confinement.

When offered a chance at early release, McCain refused to be repatriated before other American detainees who had been held longer than he, out of respect for the POW code of conduct. His injuries sustained during the war left him with lifelong disabilities.

McCain returned from the Navy in 1981, moving to Arizona. Soon after entering politics in 1982, McCain was elected to the US House of Representatives, where he served two terms before setting his sights on the US Senate, which he joined in 1987 and to which he won easy re-election five times (most recently in 2016).

© VNA, AFP | John McCain receives care from a Vietnamese soldier in 1967 after being beaten by North Vietnamese fighters.

McCain ran for president for the first time in 2000 with an insurgent campaign against then Texas governor George W. Bush for the Republican nomination. He ended his candidacy, however, after suffering two major defeats in the primaries.

In 2008 he made a second attempt at the White House, this time as his party’s nominee. He ultimately lost to Barack Obama, then a junior Democratic senator from Illinois.

“We are all in his debt,” Obama said in tribute to McCain Sunday.

“We shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher – the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed.”

John McCain and Barack Obama meet for the first time in November 2008, 13 days after Obama’s first presidential victory. © Jim Watson, AFP

‘Maverick’

Over the course of his career, McCain earned a reputation as a maverick who put his country before politics.

A powerful Republican voice, McCain was also known as a politician who was unafraid to vote on principle instead of along party lines. In 2017, shortly after his brain cancer diagnosis, McCain returned to Washington, DC, where he cast a crucial vote against a Republican-led effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act – one of Obama’s signature policy achievements.

The senior senator from Arizona was also a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, warning against the president’s apparent admiration for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and other autocratic leaders in his recent book, “The Restless Wave”.

Following Trump’s meeting with Putin in July – during which he accepted the Russian president’s denial of interference in the 2016 US presidential election – McCain issued a searing statement in which he described the incident as “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory”.

Trump, who in the past has mocked McCain’s war record, said he sent his “deepest sympathies and respect”.

McCain is survived by his wife, Cindy, and his seven children: Doug, Andy and Sidney from his marriage to Carol McCain as well as Meghan, Jack, Jimmy and Bridget from his second marriage. McCain also leaves behind five grandchildren.

© Alex Wong, AFP | One of the last photos of McCain, taken at the Capitol building in December 2017.

Culled from France 24

25, August 2018

Pressure increases on Trump as impeachment gets closer ⁰

US President Donald Trump is feeling the political heat after two of his associates were indicted in federal criminal investigations, with a growing number of congressmen calling for his impeachment.

Pressure is mounting on Trump in the wake of his former attorney Michael Cohen’s plea deal and a guilty verdict for his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, said on Friday that the now-shuttered Russia investigation conducted by the House Intelligence Committee was a “sham” and needed to be reopened.

Asked whether he believed Cohen lied to his committee last year when the president’s former longtime attorney testified on allegations of Russian collusion during a six-hour session, Swalwell said only that Cohen had appeared to not have been “forthcoming.”

“[But] the only way to really test that is if he comes back [and testifies],” Swalwell added.

Swalwell’s remarks come days after the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that it wanted Cohen to reappear before the committee to testify.

Trump’s impeachment

Political observers say the current political trend shows that after the “countdown” for impeachment began, matters are spiraling out of Trump’s control, forcing him to either face the impeachment or resign.

In his first public acknowledgment of a possible impeachment, Trump claimed he was doing a great job, so he would not be impeached.

Why would Congress impeach “somebody who has done a great job,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday commenting about his impeachment.

“If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor,” he warned the people of the US.

Trump claimed that if he were to be impeached, the US economy would crash and the stock market would plunge to “numbers that you wouldn’t believe, in reverse.”

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill efforts are underway to impeach Trump as soon as possible.

“The president has to realize that the countdown to impeachment has already started,” said congressman Al Green from Texas in a interview this week.

“He, at some point, will have to choose if he will face impeachment or if he will resign. It will be his choice. The congress will have no choice but to act,” the Democratic lawmaker pointed out.

Other congressmen made similar remarks.

“The president of the United States is now directly implicated in a criminal conspiracy, numerous members of both his campaign and administration have been convicted, pleaded guilty to felonies, or are ensnared in corruption investigations, and the Judiciary Committee has real work to do,” said New York congressman Jerry Nadler.

“If something comes out that is clear and convincing and impeachable, I think members will act,” said Tom Cole, a Republican member of the US House of Representatives.

Loyalty, not justice

In his Thursday interview with Fox News, Trump criticized his former lawyer Cohen for “flipping” amid pressure.

Trump suggested that anyone deciding to cooperate with the government by giving information about criminal cases to receive a reduced sentence from court is making up “stories” and “lies.”

The president said such practices should be banned. “It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal,” he said.

Source: Presstv